the girl with the golden hair
by bokhi
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a girl with bright, golden hair. And then the dragon came. Not particularly canon-compliant. Hard M for a reason.
1. 00: sunset

The girl with the golden hair

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply. Etc.

Warnings: Not particularly canon-compliant, because let's face it, whereas Skyrim is a fun, fun game, it doesn't make for great fiction (re: suspension of disbelief is not a thing that ever happens). Hard M for a reason – violence, sex, also violence with sex (of the pillaging kind), and the worst kind of purple prose. You've been _warned!_

_Edit May 29th, 2014: _I've polished and added materials to chapter 1 (this chapter). I'll likely edit chapter 2 as well, though I think I'll wait until I'm finished more of the fic to do that particular re-haul. I'm also fairly certain by now that this is actually going to be two fics, not just the one.

Thanks for reading!

00: ground zero  
/sunset at the rim of the world

_"The World-Eater awakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn."_

_- The Book of the Dragonborn, _Prior Emeline Madrine

Sif falls, and the impact fractures her spine in three places.

Alduin laughs, gleeful as his bite-sized toy tumbles through the air to land with a painful _crunk._ He can see it twitching, can smell the blood wafting through the chinks in its metal scales; soul of a _dovah_ - ha! - in a pale, fleshy little body. Like a worm, wriggling up from the mud naked in the rain; a pale, hairless little worm playing dress-up with tinkling little slabs of metal cobbled together. The tawdry gleam of fake dragon-skin offends him.

_Pathetic._

The World-Eater spreads his wings, and blots out the sun - no, he blots out the _sky_.

Alduin's roar shakes mountains to their roots, shakes the gods in their thrones and sends tremors through the tangled skeins of time.

The Wheel turns.

* * *

Riften always reeks of refuse and bad decisions. The prison is no different, though the physical reek is accompanied by the spiritual miasma of corruption and despair, shit and silent blades through soft gullets in the dark. The guard rattles the bars of her cage with a sneer. "Rise and shine princess! Wouldn't want to miss your big date!" He makes a gesture across his throat, laughing at his own joke. The woman says nothing.

Ingun Black-Briar sits alone in her cell, clothes threadbare and hair shorn short. She is the last Black-Briar, heir to a kingdom of sticky-sweet puddles and an executioner's axe; she sits ramrod straight, eyes dry and mouth unsmiling, the last true princess in a city of beggars and thieves.

* * *

Sif crawls. Her last potion swirls heat within her belly, though in her heart of hearts she knows it will not be enough.

Alduin laughs; he is toying with her. The first dragon flies through the air in tighter and tighter circles, like a scaled vulture. Sif imagines Alduin landing, one talon pressing with deceptive delicacy against her shoulder blades; she imagines him shoving that talon straight through, pinning her to the ground like a butterfly to an alchemist's primer-board; she imagines him taking her legs into his mouth and yanking her apart, just like that poor bastard at Helgen.

Sif crawls faster. She'd had to shed her armor - bent inwards and ruined beyond repair, it would have eventually gnawed her in half - and is reduced to her single layer of bloodied undercoat, its only enchantment for the weather. So Sif crawls, clawing at the dirt with desperate hope towards where she _thinks_ her satchel's been flung.

Sif crawls towards her destiny; Alduin laughs.

The Wheel turns.

* * *

Vilkas sits alone in Kodlak's chambers, the strongbox open beside him as he reconciles the accounts. Somewhere in Jorrvaskr, Torvar shouts, is met with a roar of laughter; his door creaks open as Farkas tromps in, tray in hand. "Brother!" Farkas is unrelenting in his cheer. "You forgot to eat!" He puts the tray down with a _thump_. Vilkas merely grunts, too busy scribbling to wave him away. His twin hovers, blocking his light. He can feel his temper begin to fray. "Farkas. Thank you. _GO._"

Farkas goes like a puppy with its teeth kicked in; Vilkas does not hear the quiet resignation in the soft click of the latch. Beside him, septims gleam a soft, buttery gold under candlelight. The warm glow sends the early tingles of a migraine through his skull; Vilkas thinks of gold tangled between his fingers and the beast seems to snap and thrash against the cage of his ribs. The migraine blooms as he resists the urge to smash the strongbox and every gold septim in it against the walls.

Vilkas will not surrender.

* * *

Alduin roars, his thu'um a wave of white-hot flame. It is fitting this should end in fire. Sif's golden hair catches, ignites until she is wreathed in a burning halo. She cannot pause to dampen the flames. Sif's thu'um is a ripple in space; it sends her careening into the air, desperation birthing a recklessness that is nothing like her. This country has eaten her, piece by piece, and now it will swallow the rest of her.

Sif falls upwards, buoyed by her thu'um; Alduin's laughter cuts into her even as his talons rend her right arm to shreds.

Sif's scream dies in her throat and Alduin laughs.

The Wheel turns.

* * *

Forsworn overrun Markarth. Kerah is the first to die, gaping at the arrow that seems to sprout from her throat. Her fate is the kindest to be had: Hroki is caught fleeing and the Forsworn make a game of her, leaving her corpse splayed and naked in the street.

The Silver-Bloods are rounded up like cattle, and one by one their heads go rolling on the hard Dwemer stones, to be hung from the walls along with their butchered bodies. Thongvar is left alive, spread-eagled in the main square with his guts glistening in the sun.

Madanach is king. He feasts, not knowing his crown will be measured in hours, not days.

Deep within the bowels of Understone Keep, Ondelemar smiles, and gives the order.

* * *

Sif is dying.

Her last potion is a fading burn worming through her gut; her right arm is a ruin of bones and mangled meat. Her staff is in pieces, and her fine blades have gone spinning off the mountain-side.

Magicka flickers at her finger tips with the first trickle of a healing spell then nothing, for her well has run dry.

She has her legs, her left arm, and the power of her thu'um.

Alduin is enjoying himself to distraction. His muzzle is wet and red with her blood as he eats what is left of her right hand. He does not need to chew; he tosses it back and swallows, a tiny dot in the sky beside the ominous black blotch that will consume the world.

It is a small distraction – but it is enough.

"_JOOR ZAH FRUL!"_

Alduin crashes to the ground; he's not laughing, not anymore.

The Wheel turns.

* * *

Cicero dies in a ditch with a mouth full of mud.

Babette burns beneath the cold light of a winter sun, pinned to the ground by a spear as the faithful set her to the torch; she goes up like paper.

Saadia looks at the ruin that was once Dawnstar sanctuary, and cracks her knuckles. It is time to get to work.

* * *

Sif climbs the dragon's head. She looks the World-Eater in the eye as he trembles with mute fury - mortality offends him. She feels the violence simmering beneath the weight of her thu'um and understands her time is _short._

Sif has only her left hand. The glass gauntlet has seen better days, but it is still functional. Her throat is raw, but beneath the pounding of her own mortality she feels the soft bloom of recovering magicka.

She slams her fist into the dragon's eye and screams out her last spell.

Alduin roars; the sky seems to shatter, and dragon and dragonborn plummet from the roof of the world together.

And so the Wheel turns upon the last dragonborn.

* * *

Erandur pounds his fists raw against the doors of High Hrothgar. He screams with the desperation of a sane man in a world gone mad, but the wind whips his words away; they scatter like ashes on a stormy sea.

There are tears, perhaps. His lashes are frozen together, and the tips of his fingers have begun to show the early signs of frostbite. The priest has yet to notice. His cowl flaps open and flutters behind him like a half-mast flag.

Erandur screams.

Only the wind whistles in response.

* * *

Here is a tale for the bards: Once upon a time a girl with golden hair went up the mountain.

She didn't come back down.

A/N:

I've buffed up Alduin because the title "World Eater" ought to mean something, and I'm changing Erandur's abilities to actually make some sense with his background. Because seriously Bethesda, what the hell.

SRSLY.

Everything will make sense eventually. I think.


	2. 01: the blacksmith's wife

Part I: A Quiet Life

the blacksmith's wife/riverwood

01: arrival

Alvor drops his hammer with a sudden clang, and Sigrid knows something is wrong.

The sun is high in the sky. Sigrid had taken Alvor his midday meal an hour ago; they are both creatures of habit now, and she expected to hear the steady pounding of his hammer against the anvil until the sun began to dip behind the trees. Instead she hears a clatter and a sharp, sudden oath. She stops sweeping. Alvor's tread is always heavy, but rarely hurried; the hard cadence of his steps sends her to the door, broom forgotten against the table.

The door swings inwards. Alvor's ruddy face is grim, and over his shoulder is an effigy of mud and matted hair. There is a _reek,_ like blood and charred skeever meat, like sweat and mud and a town in ashes.

"Hot water. Clean linens. Where's Dorthe?" Sigrid gapes. Alvor cranes his head to bellow over his shoulder. "Dorthe!" Behind him is another traveler, similarly filthy and stinking of a charnel house. She doesn't recognize him until he speaks.

"Aunt Sigrid," he says, and with a start she recognizes the brown doe-eyes of her nephew.

The next few minutes are a blur. Hadvar sits gingerly on a wooden bench, favouring his right leg. Sigrid dumps half a barrel's worth of water into the cauldron, stoking the fire until it roars; Alvor sets his burden down gently in their bed, and Sigrid cannot stop the reflexive wince at the sight of her clean sheets mottling beneath the filthy, if pitiful, creature.

Sigrid tends to her nephew first – or tries to. It is neither kind nor fair to leave their gravely injured guest, but Hadvar is _family_, and she cannot abide the sight of all that blood smeared over his leg and face. But Hadvar had always been a soft-hearted boy – _too soft for the legion, as she'd said, over and over –_ and he pleads his case with heart, if not eloquence. "She saved my life," he says again, and this is the fifth time he's said so, it's like a litany now – and Sigrid finally wins the argument by slapping their last potion into his hands.

"Clean that leg first." Sigrid puts down a metal bowl – one of her largest, a fine gift from Alvor during their first year of marriage – and strips of linen onto a tray. "By Kynareth, you have pebbles in your _knee_ -" and it's true, there are pebbles embedded into his knee in a large swath that implied a skidding fall – and it becomes obvious that he will not be cleaning that himself. Not properly.

A shadow falls over them. Alvor kneels, a vegetable brush in hand. "I'll see to Hadvar." He turns to Dorthe, hovering in the doorway. "Get Camilla. We'll be needing some potions too." She goes. Sigrid takes a basin of hot water and stoops over the bed.

She would have never guessed this was a woman, if Hadvar hadn't said so. She reeks of blood and ash, is covered in filth – her hair is matted to her head in black, straggly clumps, and there is wound about half her face what appears to be the remains of a rag, likewise filthy – and she is dressed in threadbare clothes that hang on her so loosely that it is a wonder she is not swallowed by it. It is obvious, even to her inexpert eyes, that the fabric will have to be cut away. Her breathing is shallow and rapid; the girl's skin is hot with fever.

Sigrid doesn't think she's going to make the night. She wonders if they should even bother with the potions, but she knows her husband; Hadvar owes the girl his life (or so he _said_), so Alvor will repay her in kind. It will not matter to Alvor that Dorthe is outgrowing her clothes at a pace that rivals his smithing (_Well, Hadvar's old clothes would fit her,_ he'd say, nevermind a girl needed skirts, not breeches), or that the sudden spritz of snow last week had pounded their garden greens straight back into the soil; Alvor's honour will have the final say.

Sigrid loves her husband. But sometimes, she wants to hit him over the head with the broom.

She is in the middle of wetting the rag wound about the girl's head, coaxing the blood-soaked garment from the her skin, when Camilla arrives with a small satchel of potions. Dorthe peeks at them from the doorway until Alvor takes her by the hand and leads her out; the door swings shut and Sigrid hears voices on the porch, though she cannot make out the words.

The imperial girl has a steady hand, Sigrid has to give her that. The cloth falls away, and they both gag at the putrid smell that rises. Hadvar limps from his seat.

"Is it bad? Will she make it?" _Not likely._ Sigrid doesn't say so out loud; she isn't _cruel_. Camilla takes a shallow breath through her mouth.

"She needs a priest."

"We don't have a priest." Hadvar's eyes glitter like a doe's in the lamplight. It gives him a mournful, pleading look; when he'd been younger, that look had put a sweetroll in his hands from every kitchen in Riverwood. The thought sends a pang through her chest. _If only sweetrolls were the extent of our worries._ But no; Hadvar is a young man now, a legionnaire with a limp. Sigrid hopes this won't cripple him.

Camilla rolls up her sleeves. "I can try. But Hadvar -" She looks at his pleading expression, sighs and looks away. "We'll need to drain this first."

It is a long, hard night.

* * *

Later, she sleeps in a chair while her daughter and her husband lay on the floor. They do not have enough furs, so they use hay from Delphine's inn stuffed beneath their cloaks – Alvor's and Sigrid's, that is, Dorthe's is too small – and use that as a make-shift bed. Dorthe is delighted - "Camping _indoors! _Frodnar will be _so jealous!_" - because she is a small child who does not know any better. Hadvar sleeps backwards in Dorthe's bed, bad leg propped up on the headboard. In her marriage bed lays the ruin of a woman whose life teeters on a knife's edge; Sigrid knows she lives by the occasional moan, though she lies still as the stones, a dark shape beneath the sheets. Sigrid's vigil will last all night, though Alvor has tried to persuade her into shifts.

Sigrid would rather Alvor sleep; she expects him to return to smithing in the morning.

In the end, the potions had come cheaply enough. Considering. Lucan had come to fetch Camilla not long after dark, citing her his greatest treasure; Sigrid had scoffed inwardly, knowing full well that he had come to settle the price of this strangers life, bought with potions and spells. Alvor had an order of two sets of horseshoes from Lucan last week. That and a promise of a new axe and a replacement lock had secured three precious potions. It wasn't a bad trade, not really; Camilla had discreetly kicked Lucan in the ankle when he mentioned other services rendered.

"Well those were _my_ spells," she'd said, "and I'll charge what I like." The girl had winked at her from behind her brother's back. She had been too tired to wink back.

The stranger whimpers in her sleep. Sigrid wets her dry, cracked lips with a damp cloth then settles back down. It is dark inside the house, and the single, guttering candle light does little to banish the shadows that creep along the edges of her vision; her eyelids slide shut as her head begins to droop.

There is a soft rustling sound. Sigrid feels a familiar pair of arms lift her from the chair, as easily as though she were a child; she tries to speak but can only mumble, eyelids twitching as she tries to force herself into a state of waking.

"Shhhh. Sleep, Sigrid. I'll watch her for a while." Alvor's voice is a soft rumble in his chest.

There is a feather-soft brush of lips across her temple, and finally, Sigrid sleeps.

A/N: In case you hadn't guessed it by this chapter, this story is a slow-build, with one-shot type stories in more-or-less chronological order. Oh, and apparently Camilla's primary skill is in restoration. Who'd have thunk?


End file.
